Exerpts
by Jeccelo
Summary: Why I've been dead for a couple years. This is original work, not fan fiction, but I'm just gonna hope it flies.


Exerpts

by Jeccelo

**A\N**: Hey guys. Yeah, I'm still alive. It's been a long time. I want to thank everyone for their reviews and comments and messages; thanks so much for all your support. Lately my life has changed quite dramatically; my focus writing-wise has switched to my own original projects. Though I still love fan fiction, I'm sorry to say that I can't guarantee that I'll be writing any more, or even completing some of the unfinished fics already up here. I'll see what I can do, but I don't want to portray a false hope. I thought it fair to post a snippet of what I'm writing now, to show you guys a little bit of what I'm working on. These are two exerpts from two different projects. Hope you like them :) Thanks so much guys. Love all of you.

**Exerpt 1: Yellow Day**

The slide blazed monumentally in the center of the tar pit, the theatrical nucleus of the playground: ugly sunshine yellow, it was the largest and most amazing architecture of bacterial plastic we had ever seen. It was also a library of skid marks and graffiti, with occasional profanities, courtesy of visiting middle schoolers. But most of all, it was six-year-old Adam's citadel of operation, his cove of enterprise.

Every day or so, Adam would chase a girl up the slide to a fate that ran a fine line between humiliating and permanently glorifying. Some girls dreaded it, some pined for it like the coming of Elijah. Regardless, it would happen to them in due time; it was only Adam's daily, fickle appetite that determined when.

A typical incident transpired as follows: Adam would wander through the tar pit, seemingly up to nothing in particular. However, it wouldn't be long before he caught the eye of a certain girl and held it. She knew then she was doomed. Usually, the receptor of Adam's stare was a spritely girl in lavender with kitten brown eyes and wispy hair. Having been selected the daily Chosen One, there was no time to waste if she were to somehow escape what was coming. She would run screaming across every inch of the pit, but never able to dodge her predator. Adam wove paths magnetically about her without breaking rhythm once, cutting off every possible retreat. He seemed to know exactly where she would go; he would corner her, and in a shrieking fit, she would bounce off the other way as fast as she could.

It went this way until the yellow slide was her last hope. It was a slow and slippery climb to the top. She would leap into the bottom, all four skinny limbs scrabbling the sides in a desperate search for traction. She kept scraping along, escalating at a snail's rate. At this point, Adam would slow his race; she was falling right into his trap, and they both knew it.

After the girl reached a fair halfway point, Adam would throw himself professionally onto the slide in pursuit. The speed and grace with which he scaled the wobbly colossus was a sight to see. By now the entire populace of the pit would have caught wind of the excitement. Boys and girls all would peer up at the ominous cliff-like edifice, where the damsel—a different one every day, though he seemed partial to brunettes—hopelessly fled a seething dragon.

Her escape was imminent. Or so it seemed. Just as her small fingers were brushing the threshold of the slide, the doorway to freedom, Adam the dragon swooped down from thin air. She was in his arms in no time, squealing and kicking all in vain. He effortlessly hoisted her into the plastic blue tower, where instantaneously he went from dragon to unwanted prince charming, and pressed a triumphant kiss into his reluctant lady's plump little mouth.

On into second grade, Adam's infamy—or fame, depending on who you asked—became more elaborate with record times, prized captives, close races, etcetera. The entire grade was in an uproar. Adam's personality was painfully ironic; outside of recess, he never really talked much to girls, or paid them much heed. He was a lone, romanticized wolf, who could be caught up in dramatic upheavals of female emotions, and yet entirely disconnected at the same time. His indifference in the classroom made his sudden obsessions on the playground that much more electrifying.

He wasn't mean to girls; I doubt anyone who witnessed his flirtatious sovereignty would say that. It was a harmless practice, for the most part.

At the end of second grade, however, he stopped the chase, much to the bewilderment of most the school. The day he stopped was also the day he decided to chase me.

I was in love with Adam. Every girl was. Even at our infinitesimal age, of practically nonexistent sexuality, not one girl could hide her beaming smile when Adam's lips released her, and she was free to scurry away back to the safety of her friends. Her cheeks stayed rosy, her eyes glossy, her voice miniscule, for weeks after.

I wasn't sure Adam even knew my name, but on a sweltering afternoon, he caught my eye across the tar pit, through the curtain of skinny arms and legs that fell down from the monkey bars. I knew instantly what was in store for me. Like any other girl, I ran. I like to think the different, almost uncertain gleam in his eye was on account of there being something exceptional about me, but it was probably only because he hadn't ever noticed me. He jogged around with, dare I say it, a little less confidence than I had seen before.

It didn't take long, however, for him to zone in. In just a few short moments, it seemed like his capabilities had doubled. The feeble preliminaries were done with faster than I thought possible, and I found myself at the inevitable last leg. The big yellow slide shone like gold in the baking May sun. School was almost out. It was the peek of youthful ecstasy. In a sort of blissful dread, I realized this could very well be Adam's last chase of the school year. I was quickly becoming a grand finale.

Other boys were aware of this too. They cheered Adam on, abandoning rubber balls and jump ropes. I was sure that they could sense his mischief a mile away. The girls, though safe, formed a frenzied assembly at the base of the slide, screeching and screaming, bringing all to bedlam. It wasn't the kind of support or empathy I'd been hoping for.

My shirt stuck to my back by a sheet of sweat as I reached the slide. I managed to have one glance at Adam's face; he was sweating too and slightly red, but his eyes were sky blue and explosive with conviction, shining through his long brown bangs that were wet on the bridge of his nose.

I began to think it convenient that he had chosen to chase me now, of all times. Truthfully, deep down, the prospect of becoming a grand finale was more than I could have dreamed of. Adam's finale of last year had been the prettiest brunette he could spot. We all had the impression he had been saving her for last; he had dragged out the race as long as he could, so the end result was the most rewarding. It came to me as a thrill that I almost couldn't allow to be processed: did Adam think me that special?

The epiphany fed me like gasoline feeds a fire. I stole another look at Adam and he appeared slightly surprised; he had to breathe harder, leap higher, to keep me in range. I should have known that playing the part of the klutzy, helpless damsel that he wanted would have made the experience all the more victorious for him and therefore all the more magical for me, but I was too exhilarated to think. I started to laugh. Adam was mystified.

I sailed onto the slide with stunning speed, like another dragon invading his territory. Adam's jaw hung slack. I danced up the yellow brick road singing songs in my heart, blinded by anticipation. He almost halted in his tracks, but the riot the boys were making in the distance thawed his legs. He sprinted after me, smashing onto the slide and making it rattle violently, but I held fast in euphoria; our bounding steps tossed the toy set back and forth. It rang like a thundering drum set through the whole pit. Every eye was on us. I had almost made it to the top without even realizing that I was winning.

But I did realize, almost too late. Heaven forbid I should claim a victory and miss my chance at being kissed. I clamped on the threshold and looked over my shoulder; Adam was angry now, and launched himself at me with a grunt. I was suddenly terrified. This time he really was a dragon.

He seized me by the shoulders and pinned me against the tower wall. Below, all hell was dancing loose, and a sea of tiny, riotous people had forumlated around the slide. Adam's hot, heavy breath was on my face. His skin shimmered. I looked stunned into his diamond eyes.

It was like a punch in the face, and it almost hurt my teeth as he slammed the hardest kiss he could muster into me. It was a miracle I could breathe, and unbelievable even to this day that the deafening peal of second graders did not attract some kind of adult attention.

In a whirlwind of passion I didn't know I had, I fastened Adam's face between my hands and threw myself against him. His eyes flew open in shock and his back hit the opposite wall, but I held us together. I kissed him with every bit of my little burning heart.

The audience's reception was magnificent, but one boy below us laughed loudest atop the teeming enthusiasm: a fourth grader, pig-nosed and peppered with freckles.

"Woah, Adam!" he cackled. "That girl kisses like a boy!"

Adam's lips carefully snuck away. My nose was pressed against his: his eyes were gigantic, trembling in the wake of an anomaly. The boy's words hung in the air and pulsated inside our tiny ears. I didn't know why then.

Adam's eyes solidified into a more discernible wariness. I felt as if something was being unplugged from my chest. It wasn't love, not even a premature attraction; no, it wasn't pleasant at all. I almost shuddered. I sat in gaping confusion, and I knew he was sitting in it too.

He didn't stay. After a few blinks, Adam was suddenly gone. He flew away from me, out of the tower, down the toy set and across the asphalt, as fast as his legs would carry him.

xxx

When Adam was in Maryland, he wrote me about the yellow clouds that began to bleed at dusk when he looked out the cafe window, as if they had been shot by an entire round of bullets. According to him, the woman who crossed the alleyway every night had hair that blew wildly in the salty wind, and looked like blood splattered on the stony apartment wall, again, as if she had been shot by a round of bullets. He said everything reminded him of guns, and getting shot.

He said he had been lying face down in his hotel room for five hours trying to forget how homesick he was, but it didn't work. Later, he and the taxi driver talked Led Zeppelin all the way to Baltimore, and that worked a little.

He sent me goofy webcam pictures. There were blue streaks in his chocolate hair. He had a new earring. He said gages were disgusting. I laughed, and my body didn't know what to do with it, so I cried: I cried out all my missing until tears were leaking down my shirt and making me shiver. I sat hunched on the edge of my bed, trying to forget how homesick I was, but it didn't work. I swung my tear-soaked shirt over the shower rack to dry and put on some warm pajamas, and that worked a little.

"When are you coming home?" I asked.

"Next Wednesday."

"I know..."

"I know you know."

"I really miss you."

"I miss you too."

"Is the coast amazing?"

"The coast is amazing."

"Why does crab remind you of your sweet sixteen?" (He had said so in an email.)

"Do you remember? We had a fancy sea food buffet in my dad's garden."

"Right. And you wore the Cavoli jacket."

"Which was a rental."

"Doesn't matter. I can't afford to even look at it."

"It's just a jacket."

"I miss you again."

"Just get out with Jalor. See a movie. You're so dramatic, Emmy."

My heart became a little puddle. Drip, drop went a creamy pink pudding off the tips of my ribs.

**Exerpt 2: Meeting Alexema**

The tiny, pixie corpse was prostrate in a sparse spider's web. Her flesh and organs had been eaten away by time's thorough gnawing. She was a miniscule skeleton, so very fragile, like a puppet made of salt crystals all strung together with marrow. Her skull was no bigger than his fingernail, which he placed underneath her limp hand.

"How very tragic," he mused.

The electric fibers on her back and arms had survived the decomposition. They were clasping onto life, undulating, comparable to the soft hair on the back of his neck.

"Your wings have not withered completely," he observed, touching the fibers, feeling their sting.

Carefully he detached the corners of the spider web from the greedy pine needles and twisted it about his fingers, forming a hammock for the skeleton. She hung lifeless and frail; a pearl in a delicately woven pouch.

He was young, not yet twenty. His eyes were the color of secrets, narrow and impregnable, yet unfairly penetrating. They were also afflicted with a syndrome that made them flutter wearily on occasion. His fair lips were split in discernment, like fabric wresting a tight stitch. The angular corners of his mouth and jaw were shaded gray; he was sickly but majestic and with a dry, reticent beauty.

Cradling the web and it's unfortunate catch, he sauntered to the edge of the cliffside where a great abyss yawned with darkness at his feet. The peal of unseen water rested in a quiet kiss on the wind's mouth, before it was picked up in the wind's embrace and spat capriciously as fine mist against the rock. This was far below him and he barely heard it.

"Where was your home?" he said to the skeleton. "Who was waiting for you to come back?"

He wore a regal ensemble of scarlet armor blackened and burnished by fire and heat. His every movement shimmered like a glossy obsidian canvas soused in blood. Chalky, unkempt hair, ember-orange at the roots, darted from his head in the foray of the cutting northern wind. His afflicted eyes shuddered momentarily. He pressed his wrist into their sockets, and spoke again.

"I will put life back inside you."

When the convulsion had passed, he flexed his fingers. Ghostly blue light glowed against the outermost layer of his skin: an anxious magic impatient to melt through. It did, peeling from his fingertips and snaking throughout the strands of gossamer web, until it seeped into the corpse's small bones. The corpse jolted as if electrified. After a moment, the dark, empty holes in her skull were lit with a new life. They almost seemed to blink away a deep sleep. The white arms and legs twitched with a memory of movement, and wrestled weakly at the sticky thread. When it was clear she could not break free on her own, her fleshless face looked imploringly upward.

He grasped her with impossible tenderness and pulled her loose. With his other hand he let the web be taken by the wind's current and sucked off the cliffside. She clung to him in fright, feeling the incapacity in the small fibers that were all that remained of her wings. He set her down upon his arm, where her grainy hands could grip the ridges of his attire. Gingerly, she found a way to draw the fabric about her shivering figure. He looked softly down on her and whispered,

"Good morning, Gossamer."


End file.
